The Boy from the Forest
by Ecatar
Summary: Following the events of Ocarina of Time, Malon struggles to help Link piece his life back together. While wandering through the perils beyond the land they grew up in, danger begins to brew back at Hyrule castle. Zelda's power wanes as a sickness ravages her body. With Zelda ill and Link gone, what lies ahead for Hyrule?
1. Chapter 1

Malon

She could smell the last few wisps of hair on the back of their necks, earth seeping out of tips of the follicles into her nose and making her ankles lax. She could feel the little specks of dirt molt into her finger tips when she rubbed her horses' sides during a ride. She felt the crust of the Earth on them, an extension of the ground underneath her feet, and more importantly the rides of her house at Lon-Lon.

Malon awoke, a fall from her Epona into the blades of grass that poked her from her dreams. Though the fields of Hyrule always shined with the energy of the sun, a perfect mixture of green and the bouncing yellow of heat, they pricked travelers all the way back home, or to their next destination. Malon was no different.

She sat up, Earth beneath her moving her into the nebulous between her home and wherever she was going. The fields stretched, for how long she didn't know. When she was a child, she remembered thinking the world was so small, a castle, a mountain and a lake all that was surrounding her little ranch, though back then the ranch was quite big. But she'd moved past her little walls, into a quite scary expanse of space.

"Go back to sleep."

Into a quite scary expanse of space with a boy from the forest.

"We should really move today Link. We can't stay here forever."

"Who says?"

Malon stared at the man dressed not in the green of the fields, but in a moss green, fully set in the ruins of his tunic. She could see the tangles of his pale hair through the rips of his hat, disappearing into the grass below him. He was sitting up, just as he was every day. She examined him like this perpetually it seemed, in this same position, with his same gaunt appearance and paled hair in tunic to remind herself why she was there.

"I say, Link. Two weeks is long enough."

"If we move now, when will we stop?"

"When I grow tired."

Just as she said this, Link pushed himself from the ground, and she examined further the bones underneath his garments. Oh how weak he'd grown.

She watched his arms convulse, as his hands tightened around his sword in the ground.

His arms used to tighten around the grip of the Master Sword in the same way.

Edges of flames flashed out of the Earth before her now, and she could smell the burning wood from her ranch and heat jumping from the snarls of the fire into the beads of sweat soaking her dress. She watched four quick flashes of light cut the door in before Link barreled through with the legendary blue sword to save his farm maiden. It was all a trope she guessed, but somehow it'd been real. People had told her she was dreaming, lying and exaggerating when she mentioned the four cuts of light that peered through her door. It was true that as she grew older, Malon less and less could tell the difference between what was real and what was just a dream, or if there ever really was a difference to begin with. Those flashes of light felt real, honey suckle sweet, just like the spots of fire that burned her arms and made her eyes dry and welt up. She also remembered the taste of goblin blood, in her eyes, and mouth, soaking the grass under her. There were certainly flashes then.

Where the hell was that Link?

He pulled the sword out, and trudged forward without saying another word. She left the food stores and little water they had left, picking up her ocarina and the gear Link left behind. They'd have more food soon.

They bounded forward under the sun, running through open fields with shorter grass in order to gain time and to avoid being seen. Malon had moved past the walls of Zelda and her King's castle, but not past the remnants of the war, goblins left behind on Ganon's outposts. They were eradicated pretty quickly back in the "real" Hylian city, but here, there was no order, no squadrons to hunt them down. There wasn't even a path to avoid them all, because they'd long since left their posts to roam.

Malon's nose began to burn with the smell of rot from Goblins, probably from the Hylian skin sewn into Goblin tongues, and gulped up by their blades. She pushed them out of their minds.

She heard splashes ahead, and felt water drink up her feet.


	2. Chapter 2

Erin

She sprinted up the steps, water bounced in and out of pots, toward her Grace's chamber.

She remembered coming up these steps just a few short months ago, without the pots dripping water on her skirt. The stone floor wasn't as cracked as it was now, and she could see the lines of mud washed off the face of the castle that had leaked through the windows during the rain season.

She also remembered the sounds of the building, how loud it had been after the boy from the greenwood had returned the Hylians home, how big the parties were and how drunk the city stayed. It wasn't so loud now. Just drips and drops and splashes.

Erin's flailing up the stairs finally brought her up Zelda's door. Her eyes dried themselves, her back tensed and her lips shrank. Open.

Zelda's room felt like a soiled shirt, full of the salt of sweat that sticks to the skin. Erin's face began to sweat upon entrance, the room a great big panting beast from the burning bowls of incense in the corner meant to breathe for her grace's lungs. Color seeped through the white sheets that had covered the walls, painted with water to relieve the stress of the heat. Erin felt hotter, sticky from the imaginary touch of the sheets.

Suffice to say, Erin knew she was stalling, examining this room. But she had to, every time she walked into this cage, she had to sweat and breathe with the beast. She'd just run up the stairs, eager to quench her grace's thirst, to heal her. She always did this, and without fail, she always stopped just before the work was done. She still had to peel back the sheet skin around Zelda's bed and undress her before letting her body drink.

She wished she could stand outside her doors, guard her in the green with a shield and a sword, unable to come inside without official consent. That would make this job so much easier. She wished she could be a priestess, walking her veiled princess through the High Garden just behind the castle yards. She just didn't want to see her face again.

She didn't want to feel the vomit creep up the back of her throat.

But here she was, no one else to do the job, and so she took in a breath of ash, picked wiggled her arms and stepped to the bed.

"My Grace, I've brought the water. Shall I pull back the sheets?"

She heard a gargle and cough, a cry and a pant. It all sounded wet. Like she was swimming in the sickness.

"Let me drink girl."


	3. Chapter 3

**Link**

"Link, we have to go around,"

"Remember how clean the air was at the Lake?"

"Yea, sure."

"I can breathe here."

The air felt smooth here. It made him want to close his eyes and turn his face up. Too sunny. But he still wanted to do it.

"Link, if we don't turn around, we won't be able to move if we're seen."

As much as he wanted to look up at the sky through his eyelids, he wanted to bury his body in the mud underneath. Could a Zora breathe in a swamp?

"You better have a reason for this Link."

"Turn around if you need to."

He was in her charge. No one said it. But he could say it.

"We're going to need food Link."

Columns of steam swirled in the air in front of them. He wanted to soak out of his skin. The columns didn't just mean heat. They spit out like wisps of fire, making faces melt like slow honey, a messy roll. Goblins liked to bake in sweat too.

"You're walking us into a fucking Goblin trap."

Link felt the grip straps on his handle. A long sword he found in the wreckage outside the Hylian castle walls. It felt heavy.

Beyond the walls of steam, in the primordial soup of mud and gunk, Link could hear their breathing. Malon's breathing clouded it, but he could still make it out. He knew she couldn't hear it. He didn't want to hear it. She shouldn't.

His feet started to kick and stomp in the gruel.

"Malon, I'll find you food soon. I know you're weak. I feel weak too. Like I could puke. I'd absolutely love to kick over and vomit right now. Put my face is the soil you know. But we'll get some meat, and put it over some nice fire. Really get the fire going until the meat's just almost been cooked through. A little blood running though…"

It got them going. He could smell them now. Taste the blood on their lips. It felt like syrup on his tongue.

There came two of them, charging, dressed in black armor, to the naked eye an assortment of packs. They were really sacks that released gas if punctured, green gas that invaded nostrils much like the steam of the hot springs under the muck around them. This substance would burn like coals in your lungs when sucked in. Their arms were scaled and scabbed, little infections left from hog fights and big spats that had been chewed off, and off again. There were tusks that jutted out of their mouths, a scraped white, like the skin of a rotting tree, with black holes and peeling bark. He knew Malon remembered their smell, the burning fat of their victims. He heard her dreams. He remembered their eyes though. They made everything slow down. They woke him up.


	4. Chapter 4

**Zelda**

Zelda could see the dance going on in Erin's eyes. The conflict. Disgust and duty, duty and disgust. It felt like a show from her bed.

She didn't blame Erin though, she never blamed her. Every day, Zelda watched her maiden age, years at a time, it seemed. Her eyes looked more and more like stones, not in color, nor in emotion, but set in place. Zelda could see her growing resigned. She felt resigned, too.

"You're skin's getting better my Grace. It's pink now."

"There are more boils."

They popped, the puss a pool, pay the piper. She had to learn to swim in bandages.

"I think it's a sign of healing. A sign the end is near, I hope. My Grace."

Zelda had forgotten that Erin was taking the bandages off. She had to look away. She looked towards the sheets that covered the window. She saw the hands of the breeze try to unstick the pasty damp blankets from her door. It was a cauldron in here. A swamp filled with memory. Sometimes the breeze would beat the sheets at just the right time. Her body would feel cool.

"My Lady, are you ready for your wash?"

"Wash. Wash it away, young girl."

She heard Erin pick up her buckets. It felt sick to swim. She wanted to lie under mud for a while. Mud was damp. It filed her pores. Maybe it would fill the pockets of puss. Give her skin back its color. Ground coffee.

Maybe she could take a bath in milk. Milk had girth. Milk weighed something. Milk was like the breeze. It had hands.

Anything but water.

"I'm going to have to change your bandages my Grace."

"Dry me first"

"The healer said you needed to keep…"

"Dry me. Then leave."

The healers told her she needed to say moist. The boils needed to stay wet. The puss needed to swim out of her wounds. Her skin needed to be cleansed constantly. She let them drown her.

The touch of the cloth to her hide hurt. She could feel blood soak her friend's hands. Her skin had been rubbed raw by the binds at night. She was tightly wound.

She thought of a thousand ways she could ask forgiveness. She saw the red of her maiden's hands in her mind. How reluctant they were when they reached her hips. The real curve of the bones. She knew Erin would go home and cry. She would remember the curve of Zelda's bones. There was nothing Erin could do to stop her from knowing. Zelda couldn't forget.

Looking for the breeze, searching for its voice, she heard another sound. She heard the click and the clack of Kingsley's foot on the stone outside her door. She could hear the bugs in the wood scatter. Fly for cleaner pastures. From the sweat. Kingsley stepped in.


	5. Chapter 5

**Malon**

Malon knew. She'd known for a while now that Link could see them, hear them and even smell them. She couldn't, but the way he moved, even the way he talked changed when they were nearby. It wasn't just goblins though. Orcs, boars, bears and sometimes the small rabbits in the bushes where they picked berries; they made his eyes change.

It was a beautiful thing.

She loved the rabbits. Watching them move. It wasn't so much the rabbits, but how much watching them reminded her of home. But Link's eyes, they brought her even closer to home. It was like the doors of the barn, the stalls, even the track for the horses, were materializing out of the bark of the tress, the leaves changing shades. She didn't love his eyes. She loved going home.

His arms changed from rotting bone to the same strips of cloth that wrapped the hilt of his sword, fluid, never rigid. They weren't the muscled arms of her king, no, they were graceful, elastic. They moved like egg yolk, at least to her eyes.

Yes, when the Goblins rushed out from behind the columns of steam, Malon wasn't surprised. Sure, she sweated, down into a little pool under her boots, but she was happy. Link was back for the next few seconds.

She drew an arrow from the quiver in their supplies, a feathered touch on her fingers when she readied it. If she let it fly, blood would spurt out the sides of her fingers, but she didn't really need to fire all that often.

Looking down the sight, that's when she noticed the goblins. They oozed decay and death, like most others, sure. But these were different. Their eyes were red, liquid trapped in circlets, and their teeth far more rigid, sharpened by kills, not eroded.

"Link, they're not the same! We have to watch out!"

She couldn't interfere though, she knew that. This was his ritual. She couldn't shoot unless she really needed to. She was stuck, staring at the boy from the forest.

They jumped at Link, but stopped short of reaching him, just out of the range of a sword strike. She watched their eyes move over him, up and down. They wanted more than to kill him. They wanted his flesh. It was gnawing.

Link whipped it his sword, bandages and all towards the sky, cutting down between the two goblins. It effectively separated them, the mere threat of a cut dividing them. This was almost new territory for her; she'd never seen goblins stay out of his first few sword flashes. They usually lunged forward, trying to tag him with their hooked sword and clubs. They never made it past a sweep of his broadsword. They weren't, aggressive.

Link bounded to the left, surging at the goblin with his sword revolving in a circular motion. If he made contact, well, she could already see the spirals of flesh funneling around Link's body.

The second goblin was already quickly gaining behind him though. This was a new trick, too, because Goblins were usually phased by the moment. If separated, they usually never got a chance to get back together for an assault.

"Link, behind you!"

He barreled out of his assault, digging his boots in the ground before raising his sword and beginning the spin. His blade started to glow green, spilling out of every crack of the blade.

The attack was fast, he'd gathered the energy in just a few seconds, and the trailing goblin from the behind didn't exactly have enough time to stop his own assault. The goblin didn't even unsheathe his sword though, merely raising an arm to block the attack. The sword was blocked mid-strike. The energy exploded out, separating all three figures.

Malon searched Link's face. She wanted her fingers to bleed. That look in their eyes, the way their backs didn't hunch, the straight sheathes that held their blades, and most of all, their unwavering focus. They were learning how to kill him.

All she saw was a smirk.

Then he fell.


	6. Chapter 6

**Link**

Link always felt a pinch when he'd been hit, just a small tug at his skin, bidding him to wake. But it was always the stream, slow and warm slipping between the bones in his back that really woke him up.

He could taste the blood that was beginning to pool on his back, now that he was on the ground. It was like citrus, burning.

His mind wandered from the battle, back home, through the greens of his village, to the pale skin with the green hue of his friends, and the green hair that kept him up at night. He could taste the greens from back home, the ones that soured in his mouth, just like the blood was now. He could hear the birds wisp by.

_Zip_

His eyes opened up, clogged with mud, steaming mud that burned and sloshed about. He looked towards the sky, filled with darkness now, but stained with flicks of orange from the goblin fire around him. He didn't have to see it, but he knew because he could feel the burn around him. It was different, a melting fire instead of a heating one. He felt his skin would slide right off his bones if he touched it.

Arrows launched all around him, and he could see Malon's clearly flying forward because of the hook on the end of the stock. They sunk into the skin of the enemy to keep the arrow lodged in its victim.  
Maybe on any other day he would have been angry with her for entering the fight. This was his. Perhaps the only "his" he had left. But he couldn't move; he was stuck in a pool of steamy mud, his blood seeping further into the muck. He was starting to feel pain now, like the feeling had finally returned to the area in his back that'd been cloaked in dreams and dirt.

Immobilized, he couldn't actually see any of the fighting going on behind him, but he could sure as hell feel it, hear it, and smell it. The fire whipping around him was like a haze, he had to concentrate to move past it, but if he closed his eyes, he could still smell them. He smelled the two that had attacked him immediately, neither of them were dead.

This didn't surprise him though. The minute they jumped out from behind that smoke, he knew he was fucked. He just wanted to know how. They had more skillfully crafted swords, heavier armor, and even the way they moved told Link what he had needed to know. They were better than him. That's all that ran through his head. But, he wanted to see how they'd beat him. The smell of open festering flesh and dried shit let him in.

There had been a small troupe of goblins behind those pillars of steam, they'd been ordered to wait. The two had been testing him, tasting the edges of his blade just to see how much of a problem he was. He hadn't been much apparently, if they didn't feel the need to kill him themselves.

The pool on his back and the nagging of his bones every time he moved told him he'd been shot with an around just above the waste, thankfully a little to the right instead of directly into his spine. He'd be able to move again, he estimated, if he made it out of here.

He couldn't see Malon, but he imagined the sweat dripping down the sides of her faces, the blood, red just like his, spurting out of the sides of her fingers with every arrow. He wanted to get up, to help her get out of here, but he couldn't. All he could do was imagine her shooting arrows. Pathetic.

At his worst down in the mud and the muck, he felt the fire around him shoot even higher. It felt hot, an incredible burn at first the reach the back of his legs, and tore through his leggings, but then it changed. He screamed as the skin fried on his calves, but his back felt warm, the fire of the fairy heating the night around him. Malon had lit an arrow with the magic fire of a fairy, and sent it flying. That would stall them for a while. It burned goblins, quite cruelly.

He heard the splashing of boots above him, the grunts of worry splitting into his ears. Hands grabbed him. He felt mangled now, burned and bloody.

"Can you walk?"

Link's throat started to fill up. He started puking out.

"We've got to get out of here. Tell me when you can walk."

He felt Malon pick him up. She'd always been strong, well beyond the limits of her appearance. She possessed natural strength. She could endure.

She didn't deserve to be here.


	7. Chapter 7

**Kingsley**

Zelda's room smelled like the sewer lines in the back alleys of the city. He saw troughs of waste circling the cow of the castle.

"My Queen, how are you today?"

"What's the light like outside today Kingsley?"

"Beautiful. The breeze is cool my Queen. Are you going to be feeling it today?"

He saw her eyes move toward her window. This bit her. He liked to bite people sometimes.

"Should I come back later my Queen? I have a few things to do discuss, but if you need your rest, I'll return."

"Leave us Erin."

The servant girl walked by Kingsley. Erin. His tongue tasted the air around her. She couldn't afford perfume, but she positively reeked of it. He'd like a bite. Her burning hair. Her paleness of her upper lips. The wet spots around her upper thigh from the buckets of water. He reached for her hand.

"Make sure you eat girl. Fatten up."

"Yes sir."

He made her shake. Fuck. Her hands were wet. Wet with rotting pig skin.

Smiled. Door shut.

"Where's Link Kingsley?"

"He's still not back yet my Queen. We've got as many scouts as possible out beyond the walls. I feel confident we'll find him."

"Do you feel confident I'll get out of bed today Kingsley?"

"I'm sure one day you will my Queen."

"What is it about today that makes you doubt my getting out of this bed?"

"I doubt nothing when it comes to the great Zelda. If you wish to get out of that bed, you will rise. I wait for that day ever so patiently, that's all I mean."

"You said you were confident your scouts would find Link. What is it about the future that makes you so confident you'll find him? What is it about the future that makes the breeze more likely to blow, for this window to open up, for me to get out of bed and walk to my window and see Link? What is it to you?"

"There have been dark days before my Queen. There will always be dark days. And there will always be some semblance of light, I believe, if you look far enough. We'll look far enough."

"I hear Goblins love fire."

"I don't know this rumor to be true. I'll have someone bring you news if it is a farce."

"Kingsley, go feel the breeze."

"Yes my Queen."

He grinned. He'd left teeth marks in her hide.


	8. Chapter 8

**Malon**

She'd felt him pass from her arms into a world of sleep a while ago.

Or maybe it wasn't that long ago.

It was scary to think like that. She'd been running with his arms chained to her shoulder since the bog. She was sweating. That had been the best indicator of the kind of time they were making. Running backwards, how good that felt.

But his arms eventually turned from whips moving like elastic bands in the heat of battle to the ones she knew. They started to feel like butter, jagged pieces of bread slashing through the paste inside his skin. He'd left for a little while.

Even with his insides the butter on her childhood bread, he was heavy to carry. She knew that carrying Link around made minutes seem like days, and the burning on her skin hadn't really stopped yet. But she wouldn't look back.

The salt of her sweat keep bleeding into her eyes, like the burning of a wildfire bush from back home. The salt was turning into sandcastle figures resembling the girl from Lon Lon ranch and some nasty Goblins.

She wouldn't let herself remember the battle though.

It was better to get as far away as possible. They'd covered so much distance since leaving the castle. It'd be impossible to see a doctor. Then again, she'd been carrying a great weight. Her skin still burned. Maybe they'd only been gone a few hours.  
Beyond the sensory overload of burned skin and the dampness on the back of Link's tunic that Malon refused to believe was his actual blood, was a buzzing. She wasn't actually quite aware of it at first; it wasn't a prick or a prod at her skin, nor a whisper or a shout in her ear. No, she couldn't hear at all anymore. The buzz existed in a world beyond hers. Her damp hands, her aching neck, the anvil on her chest from the smoke in the swamp were gravity keeping her from the atmospheric buzzing of Hylian night.

But eventually, the well runs dry. Your lips chap and your bones creak. Weight is lifted and buzzing begins.

Malon heard the zips, a branch through caught under her skin, and her blood vessels began to pop. Her teeth felt raw, enamel aching. She knew exactly what was sounding. She knew why it was buzzing. But, most of all, she knew she had to stop before the buzzing got any louder, any closer. Before she got any farther up into the sky, she had to stop, she had to feel weight again. But, no matter how light Link grew, how much her ears began to bleed out hornet sounds and sacred bee hymns, she could not stop. She'd float away, her chest would pop open, her eyes rattle out like marbles right out of their sockets, but she could not stop.

She would trudge on. Past the muck of the swamp she knew Link wanted to sink into. Into the Deku Hornets.

She wished the floods would overtake the beach.


	9. Chapter 9

**Gail**

The smell that flowed out of the back alleys under the shadow of the castle turned the smirk on Gail's face into a laughter that made his friend Drew feel quite uncomfortable on the city street.

"Laughing at our own shit everyday gets old kind of fast Gail."

"I'm sorry, the smell, it's just comedy. You think it smells like this up there? Does Zelda's shit stink?"

"Be careful out here with what you're saying. I feel like I take risks with you every day just walking to the fucking market."

"Just act real cool like Drew and they may take you to meet the queen bee before they kill you."

Drew was stupid. He probably assumed this was some type of coping mechanism to mask Gail's repressed trauma and angst about the whole thing. Nah, the city was just funny these days.

"Yea yea man. Marge is first on my list today. After that we'll do your first okay?"

"She's not going to give you any bread man. It's a waste."

"I wonder if she'll have any rolls today."

"Maybe she'll have some sweat bread for you Drew."

"Wouldn't life just be grand? Make it so."

They walked together, Drew and Gail, two members of the lower city under reign of the ever-it-seemed-to-be raining castle. They weren't citizens, rather part of the grey stone marketed silver in offers that couldn't be refused. Their heads resembled the cutout circles in the wooden doors, and their limbs, if pointed straight up, were like the leftover lampposts surrounding roads to broken down temples. They were 19 years old.

The boys walked into the market, the streets lined with stands filled to the brim with empty pots. The pots were soaked in the red from berries picked long before the war. The color faded, perhaps seeping back into the Earth away from hunger, and a brown began to show through. It was fitting.

Gail and his friend knew just about everyone who worked at these stalls. Gail chose not to know everybody though. He wanted to meet new people every time he came, and so he left a section that he knew he'd never go to talk to, or buy things from. They'd be known in a matter of minutes. So he left them there. Drew knew everybody. They loved him, in the way a branch loves its hanging fruit. They wouldn't sell him food, usually.

"Get the fuck out of here."

"What are our options today Marge?"

Gail watched Drew trade blows with Marge for the next minutes. That's what it seemed like anyway. He knew the conversation. Marge would say something, and he'd ignore whatever she said. They'd smile, and he'd walk away with no bread. She was the only baker in town.

Sometimes people asked him why he was friends with Drew. That was a weird thing to do, ask a boy why his friends who they were. Before the war, people never asked why anyone was friends with anyone. Now, everyone had time to ask.

"Marge, be a peach and have a basket ready for tomorrow."

"Gail, take your friend on home now."

It was weird being pulled into conversation with these people sometimes. It felt like tripping over a rock. There's a steady sweat, and then a solid rock.

He pulled Drew away. But, Drew kept pulling back to get blows back in with his friend. That's when Gail really got to look at Marge. People in Hylian plazas looked like big pots of clay to Gail. They were chipped, and still chipping as a matter of fact.

Marge's hair was a fading mess of the red coloring that crumbled like the pots. She was born to chip. Her face was plump, shaped like an apple with her cheek bones rounded like the tops of the pots. They looked like the pots legends were told on. Her eyes weren't strong. They were round, too, the eyes of propaganda drawings. They looked happy.

Her face was held up by a pin neck, a work of art entirely in itself. It was like the face of a grand cathedral. There was some sort of beautiful mechanization going on underneath, supporting the strain of her head.

Her body was typically eroded by her lack of self-discipline of the last few years. She was big, her breasts past enlarging, now being eaten by the rest of her form. She probably waddled.

"I'll take him off your hands Marge."

He'd been frozen for a little while. No doubt, he felt like he'd just been called a liar, after lying. He'd stood like the stock of a clock. He wondered. He wandered.

He pulled Drew out of the cathedral in front of him. He wanted to know how she worked. How she could be so big when people were going without bread and buildings were collapsing with their religions. Hyrule was eroding at an alarming rate. But she was a symbol for joy, happiness. She'd known Hyrule before the war. And she knew it after. She was a wonder of the world.

There was a concreteness that came with the shambled, rundown wood stalls of the plaza. They existed beyond the reach of the kingdom and its leaders. Zelda could burn them all down, and they would in fact burn, no fairy magic would save them. But they would be back the next day. Just like Marge, she'd go without food for a few days, but the fat would be right back. Resiliency.

The rest of the town made Gail laugh. The sewage smells, the rundown stone blocks of the temples, and even the castle above. They were a cliché. You read about them in books and scripts, the heavier side to the stories told to children. They were supposed to make you grieve, and they didn't.

But these stands, filled with empty pots and plates and the wishes of the families who slaved to put them together, they were painful. He didn't want them to be there. He wanted them to burn.

And they did.


End file.
